


Dancing Queen

by petricholour



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Fluff, Foggy loves Beyonce, M/M, Matt is an unintentional voyeur, Neighbours AU, an excuse to have dancing and pancakes and Beyonce in one fic, and Good Things happen, and Matt loves Foggy, plot what plot?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-13
Updated: 2016-06-13
Packaged: 2018-07-14 22:17:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7193072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/petricholour/pseuds/petricholour
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Matt Murdock may be a vigilante who draws a strict moral line at being lethal, but the cute blond neighbour downstairs who dances to pop music every morning is the making of Matt Murdock, Creep Supreme.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dancing Queen

**Author's Note:**

> Cooper Square is a real, actual community center in Hell's Kitchen but my research for this was superficial and I also take zero responsibility for said inaccuracies if they exist, because fluff is life. Basically I wanted to throw some cute tropes together that I enjoy and hope you do too!

Matt cocks his head to hear a little better. It's that time of the day (his favourite time of the day). He takes his attention off the egg white omlette sizzling away in the pan and narrows his senses on 5A, onto a set of tiny headphones inserted into someone's ear canal -

_\- me and my boo in my boo coup ridin'-_

There's a distinct shuffle thump as the man in the flat beneath him bounces his shoulders and tosses his head side to side, his hair making a swooshing noise around his cheeks as he pops his hip and mouths along to the song -

 _\- Ladies if you love your man show him you're the flyest  
__Grind upon it girl_ -  
  
The guy in 5A makes some sort of gesture and swings his hips in a circle in what Matt assumes is interpretative choreography of grinding on someone's dick (Matt blushes, please help him God) and snaps his fingers as he bounces along to _show him how you ride it_ and splays his legs apart and brings them together to his left in a smooth step right in time to repeat -  
  
\-  M _e and my boo in my boo coup ridin'_ -

Oh no. The pitfalls of distraction.

Matt's omlette is beginning to char on the underside and it's going to set off the smoke alarm if Matt doesn't turn his attention to it immediately. Clumsily, he fumbles for the handle. Below him, 5A abandons lipsyncing in favour of full-out belting out the melody, adding his own slightly-off tune voice to Beyonce's -

_KILLIN' ME SOOOOOFTLYY, AND I'M STILL FALLING -_

The omelet smokes resentfully on his plate while Matt's wonders why 5A is doing some sort of movement that involves semaphore? What _is that_ honestly? What - is he a clock, are his arms ticking? It doesn't seem to make any sense to Matt but he can't stop listening to the guy in 5A wiggling his bottom and tossing his hair around. It's not the first time Matt has ever seen (?) someone dancing, but there's something riveting about his neighbour's unselfconsciousness and _joie de vivre_ which makes him automatically attractive to Matthew Murdock, the king of being constantly self-conscious about every movement he makes, ever. Ever since he moved in to this new building two weeks ago, after shaving the thinnest slice out his father's money as he possibly could while also getting roof access, he never gave much thought to his neighbours apart from just checking that they were mostly harmless.

5A just wiped his dance-sweat off his forehead and onto his wrist and Matt's nostrils flare. This is unfair. He's going to be late, because he's a little obsessed with 5A and comes in late to work just so that he can leave after 5A does and creep on him walking going down the stairs, humming to himself. What? It's kinda impossible not to creep on the people in his vicinity, it comes with the gig, so yeah, don't judge him. The guy in 5A is one Foggy Nelson (as Matt discovered by reading the engraved tag on his mailbox downstairs) who's extremely nimble on his feet and seems to genuinely enjoy bouncing around in his pajamas before the clock has struck 8 am and who has a tummy that jiggles when he dances and who sounds so cute that Matt swears he'll actually kill someone if he turns out to be straight and/or not single. Matt has a crush. It's very new, and it's pretty much the only silver lining to his days.

Right now he wants to abandon his sad breakfast and knock on 5A's door and join in, because obviously Foggy Nelson is an absolute sweetheart who wouldn't laugh at Matt's congenital akwardness and who'd probably put his hands on Matt's hips and lean in close and brush his cheek as he whispers in his ear and then Matt would kiss him and he'd be kissed back enthusiastically and -

The sound of the shower running in the flat downstairs jolts him out of his fantasy. Excellent, now he's embarrassingly late.  He savagely stuffs as much of his breakfast into his mouth as he can and probably looks like a chipmunk as a result. 5A is probably going to work late today and as usual, Matt hadn't been paying attention to the clock because this new thing has become his morning routine and Matt has always been prone to attachment  and now Marci Stahl is going to rip him a new asshole because she does not like to attract even the tiniest bit of criticism from their dragon bosses. He grabs his papers off the coffee table and shoves them at random into his bag.

While hurtling down the stairs he pauses for just a second at the landing for the fifth floor and fervently wishes to himself that Foggy Nelson is single and into men. The bathroom door opens inside the apartment and Matt can hear faintly, coming from speakers somewhere inside -

 _One way or another I'm gonna see you_  
I'm gonna meet you, meet you, meet you, meet you  
One day, maybe next week  
I'm gonna meet you, I'm gonna meet you, I'll meet you!

Well, that sounds like a plan. Mat smiles to himself all the way to work, feeling buoyed up with hope.  
  


\---  
  


The hinges creak when the roof access door is pulled open, imperceptible to normal hearing but utterly excruciating to Matt Murdock. Someone or _something_ hit him in the head with a blast of some superpowered ray, and it felt like a concussion in a pill. It feels like a miracle that he'd managed to crawl back home somehow without ripping off his ears. Matt's hearing is so sensitive right now that his control over it is basically as broken and sad as a fence made of toothpicks. He may as well be nine years old again, screaming in a hospital bed.

"Mmnngh". "Yaaargh". " _Hrrr_ ", he grunts to himself, freely making as much noise as he wants because nobody is around to hear his misery at 4 am in the morning. All his furniture is out to personally attack him, he decides, stumbling around the apartment in a haze of discombobulation and intense nausea. It's all he can do to strip off his armour, dropping it randomly on the floor and crawl into bed.

He can't smell any blood on himself tonight so it's okay, _it's ok-ay_ , he tells himself, drawing the sheets around his middle and jamming a pillow over his head while he pulls his knees towards his chest. Even the fibers of the hypoallergenic pillow rustle like the leaves of a forest in a storm and Matt has to force himself to be an adult about this. He shits his position to lie flat on his stomach with just his chin and nose peeking out of his bedclothes and tries very hard to compartmentalise. No good.

If he can't filter anything out, he'll have to just let it wash over him. Breathe in, breathe out. Look for the point of complete calm. He tries to accept the night as it is. The water gurgles in the pipes, the residual heat of the day sizzles out from the building facade, the clock in his kitchen sounds like a twelve-member drum circle, and his own heartbeat, anxious and unhappy, is stuttering.

Like a finger seeking out a satisfying itch, his senses wrap around 5A below, picking up the sound of Foggy Nelson snuffling in his sleep, the persistent dripping of his kitchen sink, and the hum of his laptop fan (why doesn't he ever switch it off, for fuck's sake?) and the squish-thump of his heartbeat. It's a strange, almost liquid sound, Matt realises, the sloshing of the chambers filling with blood - a miniature aqueduct flooding the ventricles of his heart - followed by the squeeze, the ventricles contracting like a fist - and filling his whole body with the blood that gushes out. Stick always taught him to notice heartbeats and use them as tells, but he never told him how soothing the sound could be, like the ocean on a calm day. He should write Foggy Nelson a thank-you note for this, he thinks, before exhaustion knocks him out despite the throbbing of his brain.

\--

A few days later Matt's getting ready for morning service and walking around the apartment with his phone held between his ear and shoulder. Father Lantom's birthday is next week and he's being invited to the extra-secret party at the community center and Sister Clarence sounds very excited. Matt smiles; he makes a mental note to bring a card with the sort of cringeworthy puns that make the priest crack up unironcally. He doesn't expect the doorbell to ring.

Frowning, he asks Sister Clarence to hold before he realizes who's on the other side of the door. "Holy shit", he mutters, and hears Sister Clarence gasp " _Matthew!"_ on the other end of the line. Hurriedly saying his goodbyes, he tosses the phone on the couch and walks up to the door with his palms starting to sweat. He wipes them on his pants. On the other side, Foggy Nelson is rocking back and forth on his heels, hands in his pockets, not even contemplating ringing the bell another time, the very picture of casual patience. Matt's hand goes up to nervously smooth his hair before he wrenches the door open a little too hard.

"Hi!" says Foggy Nelson, brightly. Matt may be a little lost for words. Foggy is _right there_ and he's just showered but he's very hungry, and wearing sandals. Everything smells like his coconut-scented body wash, and when he smiles and introduces himself Matt only nods like an idiot. He almost says "Yeah, I know ", but it's a near thing.

"So, this probably sounds hilariously clichéd but I'm actually out of butter and it's too early to go to the supermarket and," Foggy winces self-deprecatingly, "I just need to borrow, like, a tiny bit? I ran out of pancake mix and I decided, like an idiot, to make them from scratch without checking if I had all the ingredients, and my eggs are cracked and everything, so, long story short, I'm making an ass of myself in front of my extremely attractive neighbour because I never update my grocery list."

Matt's eyebrows shoot up into his hair at this unexpected declaration. _Really?_ And it's weird but Foggy's heartbeat speeds up only fractionally while Matt's is going like a train, like he goes around casually hitting on people everyday. Foggy must interpret his stunned silence as heterosexual panic because he hastens to add, "I mean, that's not important."

"It's okay, come on in", Matt says and holds the door open. Foggy steps in and notices the folded-up cane on the entry table and puts two and two together .

"Dude, are you blind?"

Matt has heard this question more times than he can count. It comes with so many different reactions from people - mild horror, pity, shock, caution, the works. It's one of the major things he bases his judgment of people on. Foggy sounds earnestly curious, and weirdly excited, like he's waiting to show him something.

"I am," Matt says.

"Oh wow, my favourite cousin is blind too, and he's trained me into being a passable guide." He can hear the enthusiasm in Foggy's voice and can't help smiling in return. "So if you ever need a seeing-eye dog on short notice, I can promise you I'm as blond and fluffy as a Golden Retriever."

"Great, I'll call you the next time I need help getting to the bathroom."

Foggy laughs  with a loud _ha-ha_ noise and makes finger guns at Matt. "I just made finger guns", he explains. "But is it true, like it is for Brian, that you compensate for vision with, like, great hearing? Because he can sit across a table from me and tell if I'm texting from the way my phone vibrates when I type. It's kinda scary. But cool. Definitely cool. Even if he does insist I save his phone number under 'Batman'. Can you do that?"

"Maybe your cousin was exaggerating, but yeah, sometimes."

"Wow, your place is a lot cleaner than mine, that's for sure. Oh shit, I gotta be careful not to shift the furniture, right?" Matt inclines his head with a smile. " Although, politically incorrect jokes aside, if you ever need to read labels or pick out socks, you should take my number."

Foggy perches gingerly on the edge of Matt's couch, humming what sounds like Taylor Swift while Matt rummages about looking for the butter much longer than he needs to. It's on the middle shelf of his refrigerator door but he makes a big show of bending to retrieve it, and a bowl, and then clatters around slicing off a big chunk of it.

He turns around to find Foggy leaning against the breakfast counter, and says "Here you go." at the same time that Foggy asks, "Would you like to come down and have pancakes with me?"

"Uh, I mean, sure." Matt says quickly before Foggy can retract.

"Great." Foggy takes the bowl from him, his fingertips brushing against Matt's for a second. The pulse beneath them is slightly erratic - _excitement, anticipation, nerves_ \- They both grin brightly at each other.  
  


\---  
  


Foggy offers his elbow while Matt locks his door and carefully leads him down the stairs to 5A like he's made of glass. Leaning in as much as he can under the cover of blindness, Matt gets a whiff of Foggy's base scent, the tang of his sweat and a vaguely sweet smell.  It makes him want to put his nose right behind Foggy's  ear and _sniff,_ which is totally Up There in the criteria of things that make Matt finds attractive about certain people. They stop outside Foggy's door for a moment while he fishes the keys out of his pajamas, and Matt uses the blindness as an excuse to stay as close to him as is decently possible.

"Welcome to my humble abode," Foggy says as he whips open the door with a flourish, and then bounds away towards the kitchen area to pull out a chair for Matt to sit.

Matt waves it away. "Oh no, I'd like to help."

Foggy shrugs. "Be my - _ahaha-_  guest."

 _He laughs at his own jokes, oh no, oh no,_ Matt thinks. _Dear God, I'm fucked._  

Pancake ingredients are scattered all over the kitchen counter with clear signs of being abandoned in a hurry. There's a tub of margarine that Foggy shoves back into the fridge with disgust as he makes space for Matt to join him near the stove. "Yes, I _can_ believe you're not butter," he grumbles. "Hey Matt, come on over here. Can you mix?"

"Uh actually, I'd better make the pancakes because I can tell when they're done." Matt taps his nose by way of explanation.

"No shit, that's awesome! Here ya go." Matt exchanges his cane for the wooden spatula.

It seems perfectly normal that the two of them, who have only just met, should be making breakfast together standing shoulder-to-shoulder, Foggy mixing the butter in with the rest of the dry ingredients, his vigorous movements jouncing his shoulder so he keeps jostling Matt a little. The room smells delicious, and Matt is so blissed out he doesn't even realise Foggy's holding up a bit of pancake batter for him to sniff at until it's right in his face.

"Um."

"Could you have a go with your super nose?"

Matt swallows down the flash of panic that maybe Foggy knows more than he's let on (but that's impossible) and he licks his lips nervously before he pretends to sniff sincerely at the spoon. He doesn't need to, he already knows there's too much butter and it needs a little more flour.

"It's perfect", he says over the stuttering of both their hearts.

He regrets his decision to fry the pancakes when Foggy scoops batter onto the waiting pan. The scrutiny makes him nearly fumble the first pancake, but Foggy isn't the kind of person that hovers with their hand anxiously over his own, waiting for a chance to seize the frying pan from the blind guy (here's looking at you, exes) or narrow their eyes at him when he does get it right. Instead, Foggy is the kind of person that says _whoa_ as he expertly twists the spatula in his grip, and fistbumps Matt when he stacks six perfectly done pancakes on a plate. Something tense in Matt's spine unclenches, and he finds himself swaying closer to his easy laughter and the clinking of two forks in Foggy's hand.

Unfortunately Foggy's maple syrup is the fake sort, but Matt feels like he's stepped into a parallel universe of perfect, giddy hopefulness; even the walls of this room are like home, but this is nothing like his lonely, spartan breakfast with his audio reader for company. He looks towards Foggy whenever Foggy isn't looking, wondering if this is a good time to ask him for his number (he did offer, right?) and whether he should just stick to saying thank you or maybe ask, _ridiculously¸_ if Foggy likes Beyoncé , and somehow he ends up saying, "Would you like to get drinks tonight? With me? Not beer. Maybe wine."

Foggy stops eating and puts his fork down. There's an almighty swallow that makes the universe itself pause before Foggy wonders, "Is this - dude, are you asking me out on a date?"

"I guess."

"You guess?"

"Yes." Matt backtracks. "No, it _is_ a date. You."

"Okay. Okay yeah."

Matt sits back and smiles at Foggy. Foggy holds up a hand suddenly. "Wait, tonight?"

"Ye-es?"

"I kinda have a thing tonight." He rubs the back of his neck, and his long hair swishes over his knuckles. The skin around his ears is hot, and Matt realises he's slightly embarrassed. Probably contemplating whether to tell Matt that he's not available. Damn, fuck.

"Oh. Sorry.  I'm sorry, I thought you were single."

"What? No! I am so single I am singular, my friend." He chuckles a brief laugh and then takes a breath. "My friends and I are doing this thing at the community center. I give free legal aid and hold workshops on just basic legal rights and what forms to fill for benefits and stuff like that , it's no biggie, but, um, the program director I work with, Claire, she's organising a talent show. Just like that, out of the blue, not like a festive thing. Anyway, long story short, everyone's performing. And that means everyone."

Matt leans forward. He had no idea Foggy worked at the community center. "Is this Cooper Square?"

"You know it?" Foggy raises his eyebrows. Matt nods. "So what ...talent will you be performing?"

"Don't laugh. If you do then wine and stuff stands cancelled."

Matt crooks his pinky finger and holds it out in front of his face. Foggy hooks his own into it and sighs, confessing.

"It's a tribute to pop divas. Don't - I didn't pick it, okay," - that's a lie - "they forced me into it!" - another lie - "I'm Britney, and Karen is Cher and Claire's Beyoncé."

This is _so fucking glorious_ Matt wants to burst with a loud cheer and demand to attend because HAVE YOU BEEN PRACTICING FOR THIS, FOGGY, IS THAT WHY YOU DANCE EVERY MORNING is on the tip of his tongue and it's very hard considering he's nearly vibrating out of his chair with excitement, but he thinks he manages a level voice. "Can I come?"

"Dude, I'm sorry to point this out but. You're blind." Foggy sits back in his chair like he has made the most clinching argument in the world, but then his face creases into a thoughtful frown. "Wait, no. Come. Most definitely because you won't see anything and there'll be free food."

Matt likes this. Matt likes this a lot, the neat symmetry to their meeting. Its like divine predestination, even if the Catholic Church may consider someone like him an abomination, but _ah, well_ , as Father Lantom likes to say sometimes. Which reminds him. Father Lantom would be pleased to see Matt had a life outside his ambiguous nighttime activities. "Thank you for accepting my self-issued invitation, Mister - ?"  Can't have Foggy knowing about the mail.

"- Nelson."

"Mister Nelson. What time should I pick you up?"  
  


\---  
  
  


The venue, though large for a community center on a smaller, non-commercialized block, is stuffed to the gills. People are standing, and more than a few people reach out to hug Foggy and shake his hand and (one guy) grab his ass. "It is _still_ sexual harassment if it comes from a student, Nate!" Foggy yelps, dancing away from the grabby hands of the tiny guy who only grins back at him.

"Alright, teach? Who's this Matrix-looking guy?"

"Matt Murdock, my date. And don't even ask until after I'm done."

They walk away to a small chorus of wolf-whistles and slow clapping. Foggy's blushing again, and it makes Matt blush by association, especially if he counts the hushed phone conversation he'd had with one of his friends asking for a seat to be saved for Matt. He was honestly trying not to listen, firstly because he was preoccupied reading the Braille colour tags on his clothing and trying to remember how blue looked with red, and also because the idea of Foggy talking about him in third person freaks him out a little. Totally not his fault if he accidentally crumpled a tag when he heard Foggy confess, "God, he's so hot I want to lick him head to toe and _thank him for the opportunity_."

They come up right to the front of the hall, where Foggy's enveloped by a woman who literally smells like rain made into flesh. Karen, she introduces herself, and by the barely repressed excitement in her voice, it was her Foggy had been on the phone with. Matt squeaks his greetings and tries not to squirm, despite the literal storm of nudging and winking Foggy and Karen are working up between them.

"So, Matt, Foggy tells me you're a lawyer too, which means maybe you can help me explain to this idiot here that it logically follows that I should be Britney, because I have exactly the same hair she had in _Toxic_ and honestly, Foggy can carry off the Cher wig better."            

"Matt doesn't care about visual accuracy, he's blind! That wig would make me look like Ursula and you know it."

"But that won't matter, will it, Matt?" Karen asks, her casual acceptance of his blindness as matter-of-fact as Foggy's.

"Well, technically the decision should rest with the choreographer of the group."

"A-ha!", Foggy crows victoriously before Matt turns to him with a smirk.

"I thought this wasn't your idea?"

 There's the click of high heels as another woman approaches, coolly assessing them all before she declares, "You both need to get your asses in costume right on time, and especially you." She points accusingly at Foggy. Then she notices Matt and bends to whisper conspiratorially into Karen's ear. "Oh my god, _nice._ Is this the hot one Foggy wanted to lick?"  
  


\---

  
In the end, the show is fantastic. Foggy's students put up a pretty good one-act play that one of them wrote. Foggy claps the hardest, and gets a special shout-out. Claire is a calm yet intimidating force of order, and it turns out that the reason she smells like antibacterial soap is that she's a nurse at Metro General, who moonlights as a short-order doctor and has handled some pretty hairy injuries a lot of the construction workers sometimes get when they don't have coverage. Karen is an investigative journalist that apparently has energy left over from protecting whistleblowers that she spends  running a computer literacy program that focuses on teaching the community members to make local politicians accountable.

They take to him like ducks to bread, and it's a little overwhelming. That's more friends than he's had in years. And they seem to love Foggy, and the idea of him and Foggy together, as Claire makes amply clear as she plies Matt with a constant stream of cheap wine and pokes him a little hard in the chest. "I'm expecting good things of you, lawyer boy. Don't fuck it up." When it's time for their performance with Foggy, Matt finds himself holding two purses, three glasses of wine, and smiling tipsily up at the stage.

Everyone else is drunk too, and the packed hall explodes when Foggy steps out of the wings in something... tight. It's a lot, and matt cannot breathe because here he is, and the music is starting, and for some reason Britney Spears is reverberating in the soles of his feet and everyone else is dancing along anyway, and so he puts all the empty glasses down and stands up. A small, raucous crowd is literally plastered to the edge of the stage like at a big concert and Matt squeezes in between.

Claire is absolutely killing it to _Countdown_ and Foggy's dancing aspirationally along, and obviously Claire is much better than him but when the chorus comes on, the three of them sashay to the front of the stage, singing along -

 _He pick me up we 8,  
Make me feel so lucky 7  
He kiss me in his 6  
_  
Foggy comes to the very edge of the stage and Matt holds his breath as he gets on his hands and knees, level with Matt's face and wow that costume is tight _-_

 _We be making love at 5_  
_Still the one I do this 4_  
 _I'm tryna make us 3_  
 _From that 2_

\- he rocks up into the kiss that tastes like Foggy's sweat and he's hard as hell and all he can think about is dragging Foggy back up to his flat and licking the scent off him -  
  
_He's still the 1._

 

\---


End file.
